(I posted this at the deviant forum on politics section.)

I find it sad when I see videos of "Free Tibet" protesters who can't even point to Tibet on the map. Most people don't know anything about it and yet passionately rally for its supposed cause. I think Westerners view Tibetans as peace-loving and quiet people who just want to practice Buddhism and their culture. We should inform ourselves as to how Tibet relations with China were for hundreds of years. Before the awful (both for the Chinese and Tibetans) Mao revolution, the Tibetan life expectancy was low, there was very poor health care, no education, women were treated as second-class citizens, and they observed the caste system (a practice imported from India along with Buddhism). These are people who believed (and some probably still do) that the Dalai Lama's urine, when drank, can cure many ailments. We all know how the revolution hurt China, but it's ironic that despite being what it is, it actually improved Tibet's condition at the time. That was how the theocratic system was harming Tibet. The Dalai Lama himself admits that independence is not really good for Tibet. He wants autonomy (this is an indirect admission that they NEED China).

We don't know many things about what's actually going on (in terms of political talks between the concerned parties) because Western media (which we all know is heavily biased) only skim the surface, and more often than not are siding with Tibet. China remains quiet and her silence is misconstrued as admission of guilt. On the news, people see images of monks crying and being beaten by Chinese police. But there are always two sides to the story. I am not saying that China has a marvelous human rights record. But if you read Killing Hope by William Blum, you will see that the also the US' CIA did equally horrific things. We need to be objective about it, and if we want to get to the truth, we should do our own research. TV doesn't help. Manufactured consent by Noam Chomsky comes to mind. Democracy's power is also due to media manipulation. It takes hours to get to the truth, sure, but we have to do it in order to form our own opinions. If we don't, we'll just be sheep.

For the record, I take a neutral stance on this issue. I just want to encourage people here to dig deeper. If you are armed with facts, they can't sway you when you finally need to take a stance. Instead of watching dramatic news coverages on TV, let's read up on history and independent news sources.